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Christian Bale redeems the Batman in Batman Begins |
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Michael Caine
(Alfred Pennyworth), Liam Neeson (Henri Ducard), Katie Holmes (Rachel Dawes),
Gary Oldman (Lt James Gordon), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), Cillian Murphy (Dr
Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow), Tom Wilkinson (Carmine Falcone), Rutger Hauer
(William Earle), Ken Watanabe (Ra’s al Ghul), Mark Boone Jnr (Detective Arnold
Flass), Linus Roache (Thomas Wayne), Colin McFarlane (Commissioner Loeb)
In the mid-2000s, Batman on film was a joke. A series that started
with the Gothic darkness of Tim Burton had collapsed into the pantomime
campness of Joel Schumacher. The franchise was functionally dead, so why hot burn
it all down and start again from scratch. It was a radical idea – one of the
first big “reboots” of a comic book saga. It was a triumphant success, changing
the rule book for a host of film series and one of the most influential movies
from the last 15 years.
After the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne’s (Christian
Bale) life drifts as he is unable to get over his own guilt at believing he was
partly responsible for getting his parents into a situation where they were
killed. In a Gotham run by organised crime boss Carmine Falcone (Tom
Wilkinson), Bruce exiles himself for years to try and learn the skills he will
need to return and try and find some peace and deal with his fears by tackling
crime head on. Recruited by his mentor Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) into the
League of Shadows – a dark group of ninja inspired vigilantes – Wayne
eventually rejects the group’s ruthlessness and returns to Gotham. There,
working with his old guardian and family butler Alfred (Michael Caine), he
starts to build a new identity: by day shallow playboy Bruce Wayne, by night
The Bat Man ruthless vigilante, fighting crime.
Why did it work so well? Because Christopher Nolan understood
that the key to making a film that will kickstart a series and win the love of
both the casual viewer and the fan is ‘simple’ – just make the film good. Make it a film powered by ideas, characters,
a deliberate story and intriguing beats and audiences will love it. Make it a
lowest common denominator film offering only bangs and crashes and ‘fan
service’ and audiences will reject it. Because at the end of the day we know when we are being manipulated, and
the assumption too many people behind making films like that is that people
don’t really want intelligent films. They do.
Batman Begins
works so well because it places character front-and-centre in a way no other
Batman film – and very few superhero films – had before. Unlike all the other Batman films, here Bruce Wayne (and it
is definitely Bruce Wayne) was the lead character, not a staid stick-in-the-mud
around whom more colourful villains danced. Combine that with Nolan’s inspired
idea to return Batman to something resembling a real-world, a more grounded,
recognisable version of Gotham which has problems with organised crime that we
could recognise from the real world. This are intelligent, inspired decisions
that instantly allowed the film to take on a thematic and narrative depth the
other Batman films had lacked.
It’s Bruce Wayne’s psyche at the centre of the film – in an
excellent performance of emotional honesty and physical commitment by Christian
Bale – and his attempts to find solace in a sense of duty from his fears and
his loss of a father figure. It’s Fear that is possibly one of the central
themes of Batman Begins and the power
it has over us. Fear is what Bruce must master – on a visceral level his fear
of bats, on a deeper level his fear that he has failed his parents by failing
the city they loved – and fear is the weapon all the villains use. Fear is the
petrol for Falcone and his gangsters. Fear is the weapon Batman utilises. Fear
is the study of choice of disturbed psychologist Joanthan Crane (a smarmily
unsettling Cillian Murphy). A weaponised Fear gas is the WMD that the film’s
villains intend to introduce into Gotham.
Understanding fear, working with it, finding its strengths
and using these for good is at the core of the film. It’s there from the first
beat – a traumatised young Bruce attacked by bats after falling into an
abandoned well they nest in – and it’s there at the very end. Bruce’s training
with mentor Ducard is as much about understanding and living with these terrors
as it is physical prowess. His impact as Batman on the city is central towards
channelling his own fears – bats, the dark, violence on an empty street – into
universal fears he can use to terrorise criminals.
It’s all part of the film’s quest to work out who Bruce
Wayne is. With Bale superb at the centre, the film throws a host of potential
father characters at Bruce, all offering different influences. He has no less
than three father figures, in his father (a fine performance of decency by
Linus Roache), the austere and understanding Ducard (Neeson channelling and
inverting brilliantly his natural gravitas and calm) and the firm but fair and
caring Alfred (Michael Caine quite brilliantly opening up a whole new career chapter).
The influences are all there for Bruce to work out. Should
he follow a path of compassionate justice as his father would do? How much
muscular firmness and earnest duty, such as Alfred represents, should this be
spiced with? How does Ducard’s increasingly extreme views of justice, combat
and social order play into this? Which influence will win out over Bruce – or
rather how will he combine all this into his own rules? It’s telling that the
film’s villain turns out to be a dark false-father figure – the entire film is
Bruce’s quest to come to turn with his own legacy and allow himself to accept
his father and forgive himself.
It’s also telling that both hero and villain are driven by
similar (but strikingly different) agendas. Both are looking to impose justice
on the world. But where Bruce sees this as compassion with a punch – a
necessary evil, protecting the good in the world while bringing down the evil –
the League of Shadows see their mission as one of imposing Justice through
chaos, of letting a world destroy itself so that a better one can rise from the
ashes.
Its ideas like this that pepper Christopher Nolan’s film.
Throw in his superb film-making abilities and you have an absolute treat.
Nolan’s direction is spot-on, superbly assembled with a mastery over character
and story-telling. Beautifully designed, shot and edited it’s a perfect mixture
of comic book rules and logic – the very idea of the League of Shadows – with
the real world perils of crime, vigilanteeism and violence. With a superb cast
led by Bale – and Gary Oldman also deserves mention, Nolan finally unleashing
the decency, honesty and kindness in the actor that revitalised his career – Batman Begins relaunched Batman as a
serious and intelligent series, that matched spectacle and excitement (and
there is tonnes of it) with weighty themes, fine acting and superb film making.
There is a reason why it’s been a touchstone for every reboot of a series made
since.
What, no Robin? Aw, man... ;) I will say that Michael Caine is a superb Alfred. He brings just the right atmosphere to the role.
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